Joseph Belbruno Blog

  How Shein’s fast fashion fell out of favour MIKE KEMP/IN PICTURES VIA GETTY IMAGES Listen •   8:54   min S omewhere between a warehouse in China and a teenager’s bedroom in London, Paris or Los Angeles, a Shein parcel is making its way around the world.  Inside might be a £5 dress, a T-shirt, a phone case or a handful of accessories that cost less than a coffee. Multiply that by hundreds of millions of customers and more than a billion orders a year, and the scale of the operation becomes difficult to comprehend.  Shein’s draft public filings showed fulfilled orders rising above 1 billion, alongside 273 million active customers worldwide and revenue climbing 8 per cent to $41.8 billion.  For years, Shein was a curiosity: an online retailer with rock-bottom prices, an enormous array of products and a mysterious corporate identity. Consumers knew the name, but few knew about the company behind it, where exactly it was based or how its clothes were being mad...

  The Brave Witness of Chow Hang-tung By Mark Clifford Crowds waited outside a Hong Kong courthouse on Friday for a verdict for Chow Hang-tung that was preordained at her arrest five years earlier: guilty of inciting subversion of state power. The supposedly criminal act: Her pro-democracy Hong Kong Alliance held annual memorial services for those killed by their own government in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing. Only the most naive could believe that Hong Kong has a fair legal system, in which a pro-democracy advocate could have a chance of acquittal. Ms. Chow didn’t benefit from a jury trial—that constitutional guarantee has been jettisoned in favor of handpicked judges. The arrangement has helped the government secure a near-perfect record of convictions in national security cases. The trial of Ms. Chow and other leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance produced some unexpected fireworks. The 41year-old dissident put Hong Kong’s legal system and the Chinese Communist Par...

. Why Criminals Love the Chinese   Economy And Why Beijing Can’t—or Won’t—Crack Down Alvin Camba | August 21, 2026 For years, international discussion of China’s economic rise has focused on how it has built a manufacturing and export powerhouse and used industrial policy to support such efforts at a continental scale. But there is another, darker side of China’s dominance: its outsize role in the illicit global economy. China purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s sanctioned oil exports, which often arrive relabeled as originating from Malaysia and are paid for with money routed through small banks and shell companies acting as intermediaries. Cryptocurrency brokers in China and Hong Kong help North Korean hackers, such as the notorious Lazarus Group, convert stolen coins into usable cash. And China-based networks support money launderers working with Mexican cartels selling fentanyl, online scam centers in Southeast Asia, and the global wildlife trafficking trade. Data fro...

  The End of the European Summer As extreme heat overwhelms the Continent’s great cities, they are racing to transform themselves for a climate that they were never built to withstand. August 17, 2026 The Continent is warming at a rate more than twice the global average. Can its cities stave off the even deadlier temperatures to come? Illustration by Matteo Berton In late May, Jannik Sinner, the world’s top-ranked men’s-tennis player, was closing out a dominant second-round performance against Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, ranked fifty-sixth, at Roland Garros. The French Open, as English speakers tend to call it, takes place during a traditionally splendid time of the year, when Parisians delight in the temperate air. Sinner, a lanky twenty-four-year-old Italian with red hair, sharp elbows, and ground strokes like shotgun blasts, had won thirty consecutive matches and was the overwhelming favorite. After cruising through two sets, he was one game from victory, with a win probability above...